Union Budget 2026: Fascinating Facts and Historic Milestones You Need to Know

• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her ninth consecutive Union Budget for 2026-27 on February 1, extending her record.
• India's first budget was delivered by James Wilson in 1860; the first post-independence budget by R. K. Shanmukham Chetty in 1948.
• Budget presentation time shifted from 5 pm to 11 am in 1999 under Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government.
• Dr. Manmohan Singh holds the record for the longest budget speech by word count (18,604 words in 1991), while Nirmala Sitharaman holds the record for duration (2 hours 42 minutes in 2020-21).
• The Union Budget, traditionally presented in English, became bilingual in 1955 and fully digitalized from 2021-22 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why It Matters: Nirmala Sitharaman presents her ninth budget, continuing a legacy of historic changes in India's Union Budget.